I am a huge Dune fan. Book 4 is my favorite of all time. I also grew up in France, loving Bilal and Jodorowsky's work.
At the time io9 was the only outlet regularly covering the progress on the documentary. It was just a super niche sci-fi documentary. Before the movie released, io9 organized a little screening, which they mentioned on their blog. I had to be there! Sent an email to the staff, explaining how important it was that I would see this film. I'd sit on the stairs if I have to.
The team was super cool and told me I could go with a friend. We saw it and it was awesome. They organized a little get together after the screening and we talked about the movie. I think the whole thing was put together by Charlie Jane. It was such a cool experience, I really loved that. Thanks io9 for helping this documentary!
Have you actually watched Jodorowskys movies? Because if you go and watch one, you know that his Dune would be have been an absolutely incomprehensible nightmare. The costuming would have been really cool, but the story would have been totally changed to be incoherent, and it would have become an infamous scandal at changing a movie away from the book storyline.
I was so intrigued by this documentary, and how amazing it might be, until I went and actually watched ‘El Topo’. It was probably the worst movie I’ve ever watched… To this day everyone I asked to watch it with me will bring up how bad and weird,incoherent, and gross it was.
>Have you actually watched Jodorowskys movies? Because if you go and watch one, you know that his Dune would be have been an absolutely incomprehensible nightmare.
Yeah, it would've been great. El Topo is awesome. Holy Mountain is probably even better.
A part of me did laugh out at the thought of you naively sitting down with a group of friends to watch a Jodorowsky movie. Having watched The Holy Mountain, El Topo and Santa Sangre I could only imagine how awkward this was.
Regarding the creative process of creating Dune, Jodorowsky has this to say in the documentary:
> "if you respect the woman, you will never have child. You need to open the costume and to... to rape the bride."
Which is a horrifying choice of words considering Jodorwsky "claimed in a 1970 interview to have raped his co-star Mara Lorenzio on camera" [0].
He said he wanted to shock people and that he didn’t really do that, but there are multiple ways to prove that, one of them was to bring people from the production or even Mara Lorenzio to speak.
I tried to search for Mara Lorenzio on the net to see if there is anything on her and it is impossible to find. I’m not sure if her name was that….
On the other hand, how likely is it that someone could get raped on a set where there are at least 20 other people all standing around and staring into the scene? Would none of those people try to stop it if they saw it? Would they not share the story afterwards?
> Have you actually watched Jodorowskys movies? Because if you go and watch one, you know that his Dune would be have been an absolutely incomprehensible nightmare.
I have seen one of his movies, and it's the only movie I've ever walked out of. Now, granted, it was a midnight showing where the theater would show older movies, but man alive was whatever movie it was an incomprehensible trainwreck.
Doesn't sound terribly different than how I perceived the actual movie. I often describe Dune as a 3 hour trailer. I didn't hate it due to the visuals and the immersive sound at the theater but I would have probably been pretty upset with my wasted time if I saw it at home.
Much of the original planning and ideas of Jodorowsky's Dune was eventually used in Jodorowsky and Mœbius' "The Incal" series[1].
Two years or so ago Taika Waititi and Jodorowsky announced they're working on a movie version of that[2]. I really really hope that one will get made.
Don't forget John Harrison's Dune miniseries. That was definitely not the greatest production, feeling like sort of the anti-Villeneuve in terms of scale. But I did get a kick out of how Baron Harkonnen ended each of his scenes with a rhyming couplet.
I would also recommend its often forgotten sequel, Children of Dune, which covers both books 2 and 3. Fans agree its a wonderful and faithful adaptation. James McAvoy as Leto II is just perfect.
I would nominate Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Although it would require a steady auteurish hand to adapt it properly. Someone like David Lowery could probably do it. Would work best as a TV miniseries.
I saw that documentary when released and to be honest, I didn't believe many stories Jodorowsky tells about that project, in some cases he sound like my old uncle adding a bunch of lies to his stories to make it more interesting. Of course he has storybooks and many stories I'm sure are true.
Unfortunately most video players don't let you expand the picture to larger than the screen, zoom in, or crop the image, and the image of the book only fills about half the screen so the words are not very readable. A little post processing in a video editor might solve that. Might need same AI resolution enhancement.
Just found you can play it in the Chrome browser and zoom in, but it doesn't help, the data is just not there to be able to read the text. May AI could recover it, maybe the world has to wait for a properly scanned official version.
There are some Google drive links with compiled art of the movie
2 years ago or so there was a push by an nft group with fair amount of money to purchase a copy of the dune storybook by jodo that they released to studios....
But it was not meant to be, you might be able to read of it on the web
I am a huge Dune fan. Book 4 is my favorite of all time. I also grew up in France, loving Bilal and Jodorowsky's work.
At the time io9 was the only outlet regularly covering the progress on the documentary. It was just a super niche sci-fi documentary. Before the movie released, io9 organized a little screening, which they mentioned on their blog. I had to be there! Sent an email to the staff, explaining how important it was that I would see this film. I'd sit on the stairs if I have to.
The team was super cool and told me I could go with a friend. We saw it and it was awesome. They organized a little get together after the screening and we talked about the movie. I think the whole thing was put together by Charlie Jane. It was such a cool experience, I really loved that. Thanks io9 for helping this documentary!